


Unstandardized Tests

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 25 facts, Education, Everybody Goes To School, Gen, Headcanon, Learning Disabilities, bits and pieces, slices of life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:55:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: 25 answers to questions nobody asked.(Or: Everybody goes to school.)





	Unstandardized Tests

Roy Mustang failed the written portion of the State Alchemist Exam, not because he wasn’t intelligent enough, but because he ran out of time. The military needed his Flame Alchemy enough that they passed him anyway. (Every night when he failed to sleep in Ishval, he wished that they hadn’t).

 

Edward Elric’s mother never finished high school. Technically, Edward didn’t either.

 

Everyone thinks Roy procrastinates on his paperwork and that’s why it never gets done. Riza knows the truth. Late at night after everyone else has gone home, she’ll let him massage her neck and shoulders and play with her hair while she writes down the reports that he dictates to her. He can do it himself if he has to, but it always takes four times as long.

 

After her parents died, Winry Rockbell stopped going to school. She started making automail instead. She missed how loud the other kids always were, but pretended that she didn’t. She kept the radio on while she was working. Grandma always screamed at her to turn it down. She never did. Eventually, Grandma stopped screaming. 

 

Alphonse Elric spent the first half of the first day of kindergarten hiding in the coat closet. At lunch, Ed punched a kindergarten boy in the nose and told him he’d better be nice to his younger brother or else. Ed was suspended for fighting. Al painted him a picture on the second day of school, while Ed was home helping Mom with all the housework. When he asked her if he was in trouble, she said yes but that she wasn’t mad at him. Ed was okay with that.

 

Maes Hughes considered a school day a waste if he didn’t spend at least half of it laughing. After a particularly memorable prank involving fireworks when he was 15, his father threatened to send him to military school. Maes took the entrance exam just to spite him. Everyone except Maes was surprised when he graduated the Academy near the top of his class.

 

Riza Hawkeye spent her lunch breaks in the library. She liked sitting on the floor behind the stacks and reading the kinds of romance novels that made her blush even when no one could see her. She also read about Xingese culture and history, but never mentioned it to Roy.

 

Sheska hid adventure serials behind her textbooks and read them under the desk. This surprised no one. 

 

Ed sang in the chorus at school assemblies. He sings lullabies for Mustang when the Colonel has nightmares. He has no idea why. He doesn’t sing for anybody else. Not even Winry. Not even Al. 

 

Kimblee has perfect recall. He has never studied for a test in his life. He studied the faces of his classmates instead, trying to understand them. 

 

Maes never got to walk Elicia to her first day of school. Roy did it for him. Afterward, he drank coffee in Gracia’s kitchen and let himself cry for the first time since the funeral. It wasn’t actually raining that day, either. 

 

When his first grade teacher asked, Al said he either wanted to be a veterinarian or the guy who sold ice cream from a little cart. He never wanted to be an alchemist or a soldier. He was not technically either of those things. He spent enough time in Ed’s shadow that he somehow became both.

 

Kain Fuery built a ham radio from scratch when he was seven. It was confiscated by a particularly strict teacher when he brought it to school.

 

Jean Havoc failed driver’s ed twice. Despite this, he has been behind the wheel of every kind of vehicle the military owns. Mustang thinks he rides the brakes. But no one lets Mustang drive.

 

Riza taught Roy how to play chess. He was better at it than she was. She knew this by their second game. 

 

Van Hohenheim knows how to read and write in at least four languages, one of which is dead to everyone except him. Despite this, there are gaping holes in his knowledge. He struggles to translate phrases like “I’m sorry” and “I love you,” because he never knew what they sounded like in the first place. Trisha taught him “I love you.” He only says it in Amestrian. He only says it to her. They both said it to each other the night they found Edward with a book on his lap, having somehow taught himself to read at the age of three. When she asked him why he was crying, he said he didn’t know (it was because there was a part of him that still feared, after more than four hundred fucking years, that this could be taken away). 

 

Nina Tucker’s favorite class was art.

 

Havoc was once almost suspended for smoking. He offered the teacher a cigarette and all was forgiven.

 

Mustang’s spelling is atrocious. Maes has to pull out a dictionary and help fix every essay he writes before he turns it in. He’s amazed at how Roy can use words like “inconspicuously” and “allegiance” when he talks, yet consistently misspell “will” (he literally forgets the second L. “If you can’t  _ hear  _ it, then why does it need to be there?” he rails.)

 

Gracia met Maes on the day of his graduation from the Academy. He looked very good in a uniform, and knew it, and he still held his diploma rolled up in a leather sleeve. She smiled shyly at him and said her parents were friends with his parents, and apologized for the embarrassingly obvious attempt of said parents to set them both up as a couple. Maes bought her a beer, then another. They were engaged within a year (They would have been married within a year, but then Maes was sent to Ishval. And the letters he wrote her were so desperate and raw that she cried as she read them, over and over, until he came home.) 

 

Fuery designed the school’s public address system. He also read the announcements every morning. Many of the girls told him he had very sexy voice. He always blushed.

 

Breda was bitten by a dog while walking to school when he was ten. His teacher bandaged his leg and told him to suck it up and stop crying like a girl. The blood soaked through his pants. From that point forward, Breda hated both that teacher and all dogs. 

 

Falman remembered all the test questions and would provide them to incoming underclassmen for money. He would never provide the answers, though. 

 

When he became Fuhrer, Mustang did not read a prepared speech. The general commentary was that this made him seem honest and approachable, exactly the kind of person that the New Amestris should have at its head. Roy never read his speeches. This only bit him in the ass once (The once was his wedding to Riza. He was so distracted and nervous that he couldn’t come up with any coherent vows). 

 

Alphonse Elric is the first person in his family or immediate circle of friends to go to college. He becomes a teacher. 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
